My revisionist version has Dantley as the starter in 88'-90' ..........with Aguirre coming off the bench.

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Well to go one step further...Dantley was traded for Aguirre in Feb 1989 and he played a couple of games off the bench to get acclimated and then Mark started the rest of the year. The next season 89-90, Aguirre started the first half of the year at the three and Buddha at the 4. Then halfway through that second championship season, Rodman began starting at the 3 with Aguirre, Salley and the Microwave rotating being the first off the bench.

All of those 10 Clippers deserve a spot somewhere in the league, we have 3 of 9 on our list that don't. They have two bona fide stars in their prime and a handful of star vets; we have a solid vet and three could-be stars (*) in their first 3/2/1 season(s).

When you take a look at that, you can realise how good a game we played tonight in a loss. Not "wow", but a good game.

Pity that I had to watch the Toronto game after this - two steps forward, one back.

On reunion shows about the Bad Boys its been made very clear that the main reason a trade was made was because the team had to get Rodman on the court more and AD was the roadblock to it. Yes Isiah was involved in the talks about it, and you can even say the reason Aguirre was the one we traded for was because of Isiah (my thoughts), but AD was going to be traded.... Daley and the GM were in agreement there.

The general thought process was that we could win with either SF in the lineup, but only one of the two was ok with there role being diminished... thats the one we went with.

On reunion shows about the Bad Boys its been made very clear that the main reason a trade was made was because the team had to get Rodman on the court more and AD was the roadblock to it. Yes Isiah was involved in the talks about it, and you can even say the reason Aguirre was the one we traded for was because of Isiah (my thoughts), but AD was going to be traded.... Daley and the GM were in agreement there.

The general thought process was that we could win with either SF in the lineup, but only one of the two was ok with there role being diminished... thats the one we went with.

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Its great to talk about the good old days when rotations and trades projections actually led to championships...

We traded for Aguirre because he was who was available as a scoring 3. Dantley was arguably the better individual player but by resetting the position, it allowed Rodman to worm his way into the lineup. (pun intended)

When Aguirre arrived, Zeke and Bill had a pow wow with him, and told him not to pull any of his moody bad attitude crap he did in Dallas, because it wouldn't fly on the Pistons. IIRC, Zeke explicitly told him, we're friends, but this isn't about friendship. It's about winning (or something to that effect).

Dantley held out on reporting after the trade, and I think even threatened to retire.